Asta Vonderau

Asta Vonderau is an Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Previously she has worked as a Research Associate at the Department of European Ethnology at Humboldt-University in Berlin, and as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Johannes-Gutenberg University in Mainz. In 2016, she was a Research Fellow at the MIT CityScienceLab, HafenCity University in Hamburg.

Research

Vonderau’s research focusses on political and economic transformation processes in Europe after 1990, and on their material and bodily forms and social effects. This research includes projects investigating the relation between IT infrastructures and regional change, postsocialist transformation processes in Eastern Europe, and the adoption of EU policies and standards in various local contexts.

Vonderau’s monograph, Leben im neuen Europa. Konsum, Lebensstile und Körpertechniken im Postsozialismus [Living in a “New Europe.” Consumption, Lifestyles and Bodily Techniques in Post Socialism] (2010) investigated the changing modes of governmentality in Eastern Europe, their material and bodily representations and ways of (re-)production. Based on fieldwork in Lithuania, the book traces changing cultural visions of the future after the end of the Cold War. It shows how social roles have been re-defined and human bodies remodified in relation to ideas of European belonging, and how the Socialist past was re-interpreted.

Drawing from governmentality studies and the anthropology of policy, Vonderau also has investigated the ways EU policy and standards have been implemented in various contexts, such as open air markets in Eastern Europe or German universities. She is co-editor of Formationen des Politischen. Anthropologie politischer Felder [Formations of Policies. On the Anthropology of Political Fields] (2014), a book that introduces relevant research in the German speaking countries and develops a methodological toolbox for anthropological investigations of policies and power.

Vonderau’s interest in analyzing power and politics in their material and bodily form has over the last years been complemented by new perspectives on materiality and knowledge. She has analyzed processes of standardization and technological innovation as a global form of neoliberal governmentality that take shape in different spaces and scales of contemporary social life.

Her current research project, Farming Data, Forming the Cloud: The Environmental Impact and Cultural Production of IT Technology, is funded by The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond). The project investigates the cultural meanings, social effects, and environmental impact of the data center industry, an industry constituting the core of today’s global IT infrastructure. Based on a case study of the implementation of Facebook’s data center in the Swedish city of Luleå, the project analyzes the national and global dimension of these new industrial developments. It also developes methods for the investigation of complex sociotechnical configurations (such as IT), and contributes to anthropological research on infrastructures in digitization.

“Yet Another Europe? Constructing and Representing Indentities in Lithuania Two Years after the EU Accession.” In: Representations on the Margins of Europe. Politics and Indentities in the Baltic and South Caucasian States. Ed. by Tsypylma Darieva and Wolfgang Kaschuba. Frankfurt/New York: Campus: 220-241.

Research visits

Since August 2018 Professor at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Martin Luther University Halle, Germany

October 2017-July 2018 Substitute professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, Goehthe University Frankfurt Main

Winter 2016: Research Fellow at MIT CityScienceLab, HafenCity University Hamburg

Selected research grants

2018-2020 Research network CityIndustries: Urban Industrial Entanglements in the Baltic Sea Region, funded by the Hamburg federal state program for the development of international cooperations (in collaboration with the universities of Hamburg, Copenhagen and Tallinn)

2017 Fellowship at the CityScienceLab, HafenCity University Hamburg, funded by the ZEIT-foundation

2014-2017 Research project Farming Data, Forming the Cloud: The Environmental Impact and Cultural Production of IT Technology, funded by The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond)